Saturday, June 25, 2011

Off Topic - Aftermath Pictures of My Old Apartment

As many of you who have read this blog know, I spent three years teaching English in Japan. I taught in a small town called Shinchi in Fukushima Prefecture at Shoei Junior High School.

Shinchi is located on the coast and suffered terribly during the tsunami that struck on March 11th. My fiancee, Hanako, drove with her dad to Shinchi to visit the place where I used to live. She took some incredible photos that shows the damage that the tsunami did to my house. I was pleased to see that it was still standing, as I had thought that it had been completely swept away like so many other houses. Nonetheless, the damage was total and it's now uninhabitable.

My nameplate in front of my house. It says "Forrest Merrill" in katakana.
What a mess! You can see on the wall how high the water level got. I'd estimate a good 5 feet.
The kitchen, laundry room and shower.

The living room.

My old bedroom. Can't sleep here anymore.
View from outside my house.
My house and some of the neighboring houses.

The view down my street. Looks like they cleaned up the roads pretty well. There are some houses in the background that are missing.
Another view down my road.
It's very strange and surreal looking at these photos. These scenes are more suited for apocalyptic movies. I'm sure the people of Shinchi are still pulling things back together. As soon as I get the chance, I'm flying over to pay my respects.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

The Interview Process for WVU's PA Program

One of my commenters, PA Supertammy, has requested that I do a guest post for her blog "That Girl With The Scalpel" but the topic that I'd like to discuss today was too good to pass up posting on my own blog as well.

The other day, I had the pleasure of participating in an interview, so the process is very fresh in my memory. You may be one of the many who will be applying to West Virginia University's PA Program this year or even next year so I'll do my best to outline how it works.

Once you have been accepted for an interview, you'll need to fly or drive to Morgantown. If you come by plane, you'll be coming in from Washington Dulles International Airport. I believe that the Morgantown airport only offers service to Washington Dulles, but there is a Grey Line bus running between Morgantown and Pittsburgh. If you come in by plane, you can call a taxi at the airport. The only regional taxi service is called "Yellow Cab". If you are driving, be warned that the roads can be confusing for first time visitors. Morgantown's roads are not set-up in a square grid pattern and the beautiful rolling hills can block your view of where you are really going. A good map or navigational system will help you.

With a campus as big and diverse as WVU it's expected that finding one's destination can be intimidating. As of right now, the interviews are held at the Health Science Center which is located on the Health Sciences Campus (east of the Evansdale campus and north of the downtown campus). If you can see a huge brick-red hospital (Ruby Hospital), then you are very close. Just north of Ruby Hospital on a large hill is the Health Science Center. This is where the schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing and pharmacy are located.

When coming by car, the easiest way to get to the health science center is to turn off from Van Voorhis onto Elmer Prince Drive. There is a parking garage and it does require a fee to park there, but if you're willing to walk a little farther you should be able to find Ruby Hospital Parking at the bottom of the hill. You'll want to come in from the front entrance, which I've marked with a red circle above the parking garage on the map.


Now the Health Sciences Campus looks small on a map but when you get there in person it can be a labyrinth. Interviews are typically held in room 2149 and it can be a bit of a mouse maze to get there, so I've provided you with some directions to help you all out. Of course, once you've been here for a while most places here are easy to find.


Here is the entrance to the Health Science Center. It's really a beautiful campus. Soon after entering you will see the four huge pylons as shown in the next picture.


Here's what you'll see soon after entering. You'll need to go to the second floor by going up these stairs.






At the top of the stairs, you'll see this. Make a right.



This is a long hall. As you are walking, keep your eyes on the left side. You will turn left at the next passageway.

Now we're getting closer. Turn left after entering the passage way. From here on, the hall twists and turns like a snake, but if you keep going you can't get lost.


After passing the class pictures of the PA students and MT students you'll come across a 4-way intersection. Turn right here.


And you've made it! Just in time for your interview in room 2149.

The interview itself takes about 35-40 minutes and consists of 3-4 interviewers. The interviewers are usually PAs who are working at Ruby Hospital, some pathology professors, some PA students and most often the director herself, Cheryl.

Now, I know exactly what you're all wondering. "What questions do they ask at the interview?"...

I'm not saying.

But, I will tell you that it is a standard interview and you can expect the usual questions that are asked at interviews to be asked. My advice is, if you haven't already, to purchase a book regarding common questions asked at interviews and come prepared with your responses in your head. There are plenty of books available on amazon.com. As goes with Murphey's Law, you can't prepare for everything so despite your practice you may be asked a question that you hadn't expected.

This is graduate school, so you should dress professionally and be punctual in arriving. After the interviewers have asked their questions the interviewee will get a chance to ask their own questions about the school and the program.

You will be happy to know that there is no essay question to be completed after the interview. There was an essay portion of the interview in years past, but it is no more. The professors thought that the essay responses just did not add much weight to the applicants overall score, so it was eliminated.

After the interview, you will be given a brief tour of the health science center campus and all of the places relevant to PA students. You won't be graded once the interview is over, so you can feel free to relax. One of the students in my class will escort you to the health science center library, the morgue, the gross room and so forth. You should use this opportunity to ask some more questions about classes, studying, etc... After this, you may return home! I'd recommend that once you get home you write a thank you letter to the program director, Cheryl.

The competition to get in is high, just like anywhere else. I don't have any figures on how many applicants there are every year, but your acceptance depends on many factors. The interviewers really do look at the whole picture and spend hours and hours selecting which applicants can matriculate. It's really a tough process because there are so many qualified applicants but so few spaces. Things that they look at include, but are not limited to, your gpa, the classes you took in college, your work experience, your volunteer experience, your personal growth, your letters of recommendation and your interview score.

Because the competition is so high, you may be turned away even though you would have become a perfectly fine student. The PA Program at WVU is still expanding and more spaces are opening up, but at the same time, the number of applicants has also risen. There is no waiting list at WVU that I'm aware of, so if at first you don't get in, you should apply to as many other PA schools as possible and don't give up on your love for pathology.

For those of you who do get in, welcome to graduate school! You'll find yourself quite busy once classes start, so enjoy your remaining time at home and get a head start on studying anatomy. You can thank me later.

----------------------------------------------------
Update 6/23/2011

There actually is a wait list. Please see Cheryl's comment for when you can expect to be notified of the results of your interview.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Initial Thoughts on the Pathology Summer Course

The Good:
-Since it's an online course, we can study at our leisure according to our own schedules.
-There are multiple choice quizzes for each chapter provided online to give us an idea of the kinds of questions and the level of difficulty to expect on the exams.
-The powerpoint lectures are generally thorough and cover most of the material found in the textbooks.
-An objectives guide plus a list of important vocabulary is provided in a word document for each chapter.
-There is a pre-test and post-test discussion for any questions we may have.
-The tests are multiple choice. (Could be bad if the choices are A through K or the infamous
a. A
b. B
c. C
d. A and B
e. A and C
f. B and C
g. all of the above
h. none of the above
)
-Since the tests are multiple choice, I expect that our grades after each test will be known within the same day.
-We've already studied this textbook during our spring semester, so the material should stick better the second time around.
-There is no cumulative final test that I'm aware of.
-The tuition for the summer course isn't as expensive as the tuition for a normal semester.


The Bad:
-The powerpoint lectures are always over 100 slides.
-Some of the speaker's voices in the audio for some parts of the lecture videos fade in and out.
-Some of the questions in the quizzes contain simple mistakes or ask material that is not discussed in the chapter at hand.
-According to the syllabus, a final grade less than a 75% gets you kicked out faster than a convict in a California prison. (I hear they're releasing 30,000 more over the next couple of years due to budget cuts.)
-Watching the video lectures takes up too much time. Time is better optimized by just glancing over the powerpoint material, reading the textbook and answering quiz questions found online and in other texts.
-Tuition is still expensive for us out-of-state and young (relatively) students.
-Studying takes up nearly the whole day (at least for me). Few people want to be stuck studying indoors when the weather keeps saying "It's time to swim!".

The Ugly:
-We go through the text at the blindingly fast speed of nearly 1 chapter every day.
-When the lectures are combined some powerpoints are over 350 (!!!) slides for a single chapter.
-Material covered in the powerpoint lectures and online videos go into more depth than the online quizzes are concerned. (Which begs the question, "What's really going to be on the tests?" and "Am I squandering what precious little time I have by memorizing this table/chart/list/material when it won't be asked on the test?")

Thursday, June 2, 2011

Back in Morgantown and the Beginning of our Summer Class

The time has come to return to Morgantown and resume my studies in earnest. This break I had planned on studying a couple of hours a day in preparation for the summer pathology course, but as sometimes happens, things don’t go according to plan. In retrospect, I believe that not studying was a blessing in disguise. After all, this could have very well been the last break that I had to be with my family, friends and fiancĂ©e for another 2 years. The time I spent neglecting my studies was well spent on reuniting with everyone back home. The only break that we WVU PA students get after this is about a 3 week break between the end of our summer course and the beginning of our fall courses at the beginning of August. From what I understand, clinical rotations in Pittsburgh next year are going to be nonstop.

The next obstacle to overcome will be this upcoming pathology course. I mentioned it earlier in a previous post, but it looks to be very intensive. It’s a single online class of 12 units, 3 hours a day for 4 days a week. The course covers the entire text of “Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease” which is a 849 page tome that medical students also study from. Each day, we’ll be covering a single chapter for a total of 28 chapters. To give you an idea of the topics that we cover (basically everything), I’ll list them out here:


Chapter 1: Cellular Adaptations, Cell Injury and Cell Death

Chapter 2: Inflammation

Chapter 3: Tissue Repair

Chapter 4: Hemodynamic Disorders and Thromboembolic Diseases

Chapter 5: Genetic Disorders

Chapter 6: Diseases of Immunity

Chapter 7: Neoplasia

Chapter 8: Infectious Diseases

Chapter 9: Environmental and Nutritional Pathology

Chapter 10: Diseases of Infancy and Childhood

Chapter 11: Blood Vessels

Chapter 12: The Heart

Chapter 13: Diseases of White Blood Cells

Chapter 14: Red Blood Cell and Bleeding Disorders

Chapter 15: The Lung

Chapter 16: Head and Neck

Chapter 17: The Gastrointestinal Tract

Chapter 18: Liver and Biliary Tract

Chapter 19: The Pancreas

Chapter 20: The Kidney

Chapter 21: Lower Urinary Tract and Male Genital System

Chapter 22: Female Genital Tract

Chapter 23: The Breast

Chapter 24: The Endocrine System

Chapter 25: The Skin

Chapter 26: Bones, Joints and Soft Tumors

Chapter 27: Nervous and Skeletal System

Chapter 28: The Central Nervous System

Chapter 29: The Eye

Exams are every Friday and we also have a mandatory review discussion on Thursdays. Even though it’s just one course, I expect that the time and effort required will strain us once again to the limit.

The summer pathology course lasts from June 6th until July 27th. Although I like studying pathology, there is a part of me that can’t wait for the next short break in August.